the king-craft of a meritless crown

This is as good a place as any to make sure I remember Arctic Monkeys, S&M (Metallica, you perverts), Tom Petty, and that FYE doesn't sell Scissor Sisters, those bastards.

I have it on good authority that there is at least one real person in the world, who has my greatest sympathy, with the last name of Assfalk.

Dial-up is slowly eating my soul. This fact has planted in my mind the seed of an interesting, if untested, theory as to how Rick Santorum managed to lose his, and I believe an investigation into his modem history should be commissioned posthaste.

I note that Billy Wagner managed to stop blowing a playoff save halfway through the process tonight, shocking Astros fans worldwide.

If "Astros fans worldwide" is a phrase that made you scoff, I probably don't like you very much.

Speaking of sports, when the heck is Sunil Gulati going to hire a damn coach? I'll do it. I can guarantee that I wouldn't play a single-striker formation in a must-win game - shouldn't that qualify me?

Hi, my name's Zac, and I'm addicted to Gordon Lightfoot.

I'd pay a lot of good money for a windshield that is never anything but perfectly clear. A lot.

Some days I feel I should take a moment to be grateful for Yuengling's relative cheapness here, when it went for about five bucks a glass in Ithaca, if you could even find it. Of course, there's a drastic shortage of Black Forest around here, so I guess it's something of an even trade. (Lindsey would likely point out that my lack of access to Black Forest means I also lack the ability to stain jackets a color that I'll call beer-orange with an ill-timed flick of the wrist, which could be considered a tiebreaker in favor of the Pottsville product).

I've noticed that companies rarely refer to their products and/or services as "cheap"; instead, they are "cost-effective." This is silly.

I never wrote down anything about Germany, and I had intended to. There was a great bit about a huge, hairy German man who I was sitting next to on the Amsterdam-to-Dusseldorf flight, and for most of the flight he just sort of bulked, but toward the end he decided he had to take pictures of the (apparently?) picturesque landscape, by which I mean runway, so he leaned over me in a hairy German fashion and snapped away. I was nearly absorbed. And there was the couple from San Antonio on the way back - likely Spurs fans, which could be the origin of their evil. The wife reminded me, literarily, of Dolores Umbridge; or, more obscurely but more accurately, Mrs. Palk from Over Sea, Under Stone. At first glance you might have thought she was just a sweet mature lady, but then she was downright evil. But it was so long ago that I don't remember how.

What reminded me of that was that there was an American guy on the plane (the one with the hairy German) who was hitting on this German woman, and told her that Yuengling was brewed in Pittsburgh, which is just wrong, but I didn't correct him, because I was rooting for him.

I was so bad at buses in Germany. One time I think I jumped the gun putting my fare in the slot, or something, and the driver apparently thought I was a dumb German instead of a dumb American, because he said something to me in his native tongue, to which I nodded understandingly and replied "Ja." Then I sat down and tried to figure out what he had said. Didn't work. Later, this same driver yelled out the window at a woman who was jaywalking, and I'd swear on a stack of Bibles that he said "DAS IS ROAD!" to her, but I'm sure I'd be wrong, because, you know, German.

And on the train, when Jordan and I took our ill-fated excursion to Dortmund on the second-to-last day that ended up just being essentially a couple of hour-long train rides, there was this group of three or four boys, and it was funny because one of them was so obviously the ringleader. He radiated presence. Kid was probably 11, at best, but he was essentially the Benny "The Jet" Rodriguez of this group. I swear his friends were taking their disputes to him for mediation, looking to him for approval of their jokes, the whole nine meters. Some day he's going to get sidetracked by a girl, and those other dudes are going to have no idea what to do with themselves.

The first night I went for a walk while Jordan was crashing, and this guy drove by with the windows down and the system up, bumping some Britney Spears.

Whenever we walked by Sweden fans, I'd yell "SCHWEDEN!" because that's how they were listed on the schedule I had, and I'd generally get a bemused smile in return, and it just never occured to me that I should be yelling "Sverige!" instead. I'll get 'em in South Africa.

Those little Pepperidge Farm mini Nantucket cookies are really quite good. Crumby, but excellent.